Viliam comments on Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: MrMind 02 November 2015 10:07AM

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Comment author: SodaPopinski 04 November 2015 01:58:02AM 5 points [-]

What is a computation? Intuitively some (say binary) states of the physical world are changed, voltage gates switched, rocks moved around (https://xkcd.com/505/), whatever.
Now, in general if these physical changes were done with some intention like in my CPU or the guy moving the rocks in the xkcd comic, then I think of this as a computation, and consequentially I would care for example about if the computation I performed simulated a conscious entity.

However, surely my or my computer's intention can't be what makes the physical state changes count as a computation. But then how do we get around the slippery slope where everything is computing everything imaginable. There are billions of states I can interpret as 1's and 0's which get transformed in countless different ways every time I stir my coffee. Even worse, in quantum mechanics, the state of a point is given by a potentially infinitely wiggly function. What stops me from interpreting all of this as computation which under some encoding gives rise to countless Boltzmann brain type conscious entities and simulated worlds?

Comment author: Viliam 04 November 2015 09:37:58AM 3 points [-]

I think everything is a computation, and all computations happen... but somehow, some of those computations happen "more" and some of them happen "less". (Similarly how in quantum mechanics any particle can be anywhere, but some combinations of particles "exist"more", and some "exist less", so in real life we don't percieve literally everything, but some specific situations.)

Without understanding the nature of this "more" and "less" it will not make much sense... and I don't really understand it.

Comment author: SodaPopinski 04 November 2015 07:41:12PM 0 points [-]

If there are really infinite instances of conscious computations, then I don't think it is unreasonable to believe that there exists no more/less measure and simply we have no reason at all to be surprised to be living in one type of simulation than another. I guess my interest with the question was if there is any way to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, by having a reasonable more restrictive notation of what a computation is.

Comment author: Viliam 05 November 2015 08:13:43AM 0 points [-]

I think having a measure is exactly the way to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I am not really an expert on this.